n the Western tradition high culture has historical origins in the intellectual and aesthetic ideals of ancient Greece and Rome. Within this classical ideal certain authors and their modes of language were held up as models of an elevated style and good form as for instance the Attic dialect of ancient Greek associated with the great philosophers and dramatists of Periclean Athens, or Ciceronian Latin. Later, especially during the Renaissance, these values were deeply imbibed by the cultural upper classes, and (as evinced in works like The Courtier by Baldasare Castiglione) knowledge of the classics became part of the aristocratic ideal. Over time, the refined classicism of the Renaissance was expanded to embrace a broader canon of authors in the modern languages that included figures such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Cervantes and Victor Hugo.